Welcome to the forum! Add your location to your profile so it shows in the side panel. Add your first name to your signature line so we'll know what to call you.
We do like photos so show us some of the pallet wood projects, your tools, shop, etc. whenever you're ready.
I want to encourage you to participate in our community and do your thing with woodworking, so please forgive the long rant below, but it is important to me.
I worry about pallet wood, because pallets are used to transport dangerous chemicals that often contaminate the pallets they are on. Lubricants, protective coatings, and many other hazardous chemicals stain pallets. Even if your pallet wood is "safe", it encourages others to accept dangerous pallet wood into their home environments, where they may not realize the long-term danger of exposure to contaminants. The tumors they get forty years from now will never be traced to toxic exposure to pallet furniture pieces. Those furniture pieces may have been thrown away decades earlier.
Even if YOU use fresh, clean, pallet wood, it may encourage OTHERS to use contaminated pallet wood, endangering people who never knew to ask.
Nobody would consider re-using 50 gallon petroleum barrels for drinking water, would they? Introducing pallet wood as a fashionable item into our homes is "crossing the streams" of potentially contaminated and safe sources of wood. It is a bad idea, plain and simple. Using "pallet wood" may be stylish in a small corner of the woodworking community. It sounds like helping the environment. It is the opposite, encouraging people to spread contaminants into their homes. Selling "pallet wood" furniture to others could be considered irresponsible by some people.
Wood is either "clean wood" or "pallet wood." The term "clean pallet wood" should be treated as an oxymoron. The term "pallet wood" should be viewed and treated the same as "toxic wood." Otherwise, we risk hurting people in unimaginable and undetectable ways.
I reuse old wood all the time, but I am selective in where I get it. I get it from old furniture and real downed trees. I don't use pallet wood. Period. If it has a known provenance and is known to be safe, then it is not "pallet wood" and should not be called that.
Saratoga! I lived in Queens on the other end of the state. You mention NY and people picture high rise buildings and brownstones. No clue as to the beautiful land upstate. Upstate is beautiful! Welcome.
My wife wanted to make pallet wood projects. A retired truck driver pretty much stated what Tool Agnostic said. Be careful.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Woodworking Talk
1M posts
88.3K members
Since 2006
A forum community dedicated to professional woodworkers and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about shop safety, wood, carpentry, lumber, finishing, tools, machinery, woodworking related topics, styles, scales, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more!